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Libraries are the real centres of learning. The realisation of the objectives of education will be possible only with an adequately conceived system of libraries. The objectives of higher education are:

An international management movement known as New Public Management (NPM) emerged during the 1970s and 1980s. It relies on the normative use of economic market models, transaction cost theory, and public choice theories to deliver public services. While the manifestations of this new approach have taken many different avenues across the world, in the United States the primary manifestations have been found in the “Reinventing Government” movement (Gore, 1993), and the “Competitive Sourcing” plan of the Bush Administration (Office Management and Budget, 2002, 2003). A central component of NPM practices in the United States is the use of “outsourcing” of government service delivery to private or non-profit organizations.

This paper proposes describing the collection assessment process adapted to fit the integrated government documents collection at Jacksonville State University's Houston Cole Library.

This paper is based on the Library's experience conducting an assessment of its integrated government documents collection using an adaptation of the WLN conspectus method.

The author describes the adaptations made, obstacles overcome, results of the assessment, and conclusions drawn from it.

As a result of this assessment, procedures were established for future assessments of the collection, and the results of the assessment were used to aid in the selection process.

This paper provides a model for conducting an assessment of an integrated government documents collection that other libraries can follow and fills a gap in the literature of government documents collection management.

As more people become Internet users, the likelihood of free public Internet access at libraries or other institutions increases. However, demand alone does not drive governments to offer this public service. Governments in Eurasia face economic, reform, and freedom of information challenges. People in Eurasia face computer illiteracy, lack of affordable computers and Internet providers, missing relevant online content in their mother tongue in their local context, and disinterest in creating content or learning new technologies.

Today, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Georgia have made the most progress in promoting the Internet as an information resource in the public sphere. Moldova, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and Kyrgyzstan have made progress in some key areas, but government, political, market, economic, and geological impediments need to be addressed. Tajikistan and Turkmenistan have two of the lowest percentages of Internet users in the world, and they have barely begun to make the Internet a relevant public information resource.

The next generation of leaders (those currently below 25 years of age) and increased government support of access, training, and content will raise rates of Internet adoption. As this unfolds, a mixture of government reform in its support of libraries and donor support could improve libraries’ current abilities to meet the information needs of the citizens in Eurasia.

The purpose of the paper is to review UK government policy on public libraries since 2003, and to examine its relationship to other forms of demand for public libraries

The published literature from government and professional bodies is reviewed, alongside published statistics on library use.

Since 2003 public libraries have been the subject of sustained interest from UK government, in the form of a range of policy initiatives and incorporation in the Best Value and more recent Common Area Assessment monitoring frameworks. Alongside this, professional bodies and other commentators have put forward views on the role of libraries, but even taken together it is not clear that these represent the needs or aspirations of library service users.

This paper provides an overview of the demand for UK public libraries, and its synthesis will be of value to librarians, government departments and professionals in this and related fields.

The paper aims to present the status of the digital divide in Africa and the implications for libraries, and to demonstrate that, contrary to recent published findings, the digital divide is not narrowing.

A general literature review is undertaken, along with a case study of the digital divide in an academic setting.

Africa still suffers from rampant poverty, and consequently resources that could be utilised to bridge the digital divide are directed at meeting peoples basic survival needs, including food, shelter, health care, housing, etc. Additionally, governments are increasingly adopting e‐government initiatives that libraries could explore for automation.

More research is needed to show why – given that the gap between rich and poor countries is increasing, and that economic development is a good predictor of ICT uptake – that the digital divide between developed and developing countries is claimed to be narrowing.

Libraries have the potential to use e‐government initiatives for automation, but they need to exert influence on their governments through advocacy and other measures.

Few studies, especially in Africa, have explored the potential of e‐governance for library automation. Similarly, issues of the digital divide have in the past been looked at largely from international and national perspectives, with little attention being paid to the existence of the phenomenon within libraries. Finally, existing studies on the digital divide largely use ICT metrics without paying much attention to the totality of other variables that influence the digital divide. This paper provides a proposal on how e‐governance could be used to narrow the digital divide within libraries in Africa.

To review the challenges associated with ensuring the capture and preservation of and long‐term access to government records and publications in the digital age and to describe how libraries and archives in Australia are responding to the challenge.

Literature‐ and case‐study‐based conceptual analysis of what makes government online information so vulnerable and initiatives at the National Library of Australia and the National Archives of Australia.

Democracy, governance, consultation and participation all depend on the availability of authentic and reliable information. Government agencies as well as educational and research institutions are producing increasingly large volumes of information in digital formats only. While Australia has done more than most countries to date to address the need to identify, collect, store and preserve government publications and public records in digital formats, large amounts of information are still at risk of loss.

Focuses on circumstances and initiatives in the Australian Government.

Librarians and archivists need to become more proactive in influencing the behaviour of government agencies to ensure that important evidence of democratic governance is created and managed in ways that facilitate their accessibility and long‐term preservation.

Emphasises the vital role that information management agencies such as libraries and archives have to play in supporting transparent and accountable governance in the digital age, and explores innovative strategies for ensuring the long‐term preservation of this important documentary heritage material for the use of future generations.

To examine the budgetary procedures of Government ministry libraries in Delta State, Nigeria.

A questionnaire and interview approach was used to identify the various components of ministry libraries and determine the budgetary process they used.

Even though the Government funds both types of libraries, budgetary procedures differ between ministry libraries and academic libraries. Perhaps the most noteworthy finding is that, unlike academic libraries, ministry libraries are often fully funded, yet they are rarely managed by a librarian. Furthermore, ministry library staff are often not involved in the budgetary process.

Provides insights into how the governmental funding process operates in Nigeria and how these processes could be improved.

To address the issue of poor government funding for Nigerian libraries. This situation has led many librarians over the years to explore the possibility of raising additional funds from alternative sources of income.

Explores the current levels of funding for Nigerian academic libraries and identifies some alternative funding sources. On identifying these sources, the success of alternative sources of income is presented and suggestions are made for funding in the future.

Funding for libraries and information centers in Nigeria is largely through government allocations to the overseeing ministries or institutions. Government funding has been poor, requiring libraries to look for alternative sources of income in order to meet the increasingly sophisticated demand of library users for electronic information services. Several methods for generating income have been identified, explored by many libraries, and discussed in library literature, but have yielded little in the way of additional funding.

On evaluating all the sources of income available to Nigerian academic libraries, this paper suggests that the most stable and reliable source of funds remains with allocations from the federal government. As the support from the government has not been adequate, suggestions are included on areas where the government could raise taxes to support education in general, and libraries specifically, within Nigeria.

The closing years of the last decade saw the United Kingdom government trying to implement changes which could drastically alter the concept of the public library service in this country. These developments provoked a nationwide reaction from both librarians and the public which was expressed in the national and local press as well as in the anticipated professional sources. In the event the measures taken were not as draconian as feared, but the threat to the public library service remains. These events are chronicled and illustrated.